Is the multiverse theory an explanation for Donald Trump?
Perhaps he should have called the eclectic Eclectus "Donald Trump." There is, after all, no necessary relationship whatsoever between what Mr. Trump says here, and what he says there, and between anything at all that he says and the real world.
Despite twice asserting that he fired James Comey over the FBI's investigation of the Trump campaign's dealings with Russia, and Trump attorney Rudolph Giuliani specifically saying that the issue was Comey's refusal to publicly state that Mr. Trump was not a target of the FBI's investigation into the matter, the president now says that it wasn't the reason for his firing Comey after all.
Giuliani terms the investigation "a witch hunt" which "should never have happened at all." The notion that the Justice Department's investigation of the matter as a politically-motivated ploy by the Obama administration lacking any and all substance continues to be the ongoing narrative not only of the Trump administration but of the right in general. The trouble with that is that former Trump National Security advisor Michael Flynn pleaded guilty in December to lying to the FBI with regard to his contacts with Russia: Paul Manafort, chairman of Mr. Trump's campaign, is under indictment for failing to register as a foreign agent, specifically of the pro-Russian Ukrainian government, as well as for money laundering, bank fraud, and filing false tax returns: former deputy Trump campaign director Rick Gates pled guilty in February to conspiracy against the United States and lying to investigators, and former Trump campaign advisor George Pappadopolous pled guilty to charges of lying to FBI agents about his contacts with Russia.
Manafort, it should be said, denies the charges. The others apparently were not informed that the investigation was an insubstantial manhunt before trying to cover up their contacts with Russia and then pleading guilty. And although Mr.Trump has subsequently reversed himself, he spent the early days of his administration combatively dismissing reports that the Russian government was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee's computers during the last campaign. He concedes the point now, though it's interesting how many of his supporters still haven't gotten the memo.
There is a much-discussed phenomenon these days called "the Mandela effect." It refers to the clear memory many say they have of former South African President Nelson Mandela dying in prison during the 1990's, complete with news coverage of his funeral. In fact, of course, Mandela died in 2013, after serving as South Africa's first post-apartheid chief of state. Other examples include widespread and emphatic claims of clear memories of the man who serves as the logo of the Monopoly board game wearing a monocle, when in fact he never did, and of the popular series of children's books called The Berenstain Bears being called The Berenstein Bears instead.
Scientists are more and more coming to accept the multiverse theory, which maintains that there is an almost infinite number of alternate universes in which each of us lives and has made one or more of the choices we have made in our lives differently. Some suggest that the Mandela Effect is an artifact of some sort of accidental collision between two or more of those universes. Perhaps that's the explanation for the phenomenon of Donald Trump, whose statements so frequently contradict not only objective reality but even what he himself has said before. Perhaps, just as Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five became "unstuck in time" and bounced randomly between past, present, and future, Mr. Trump has become unstuck in the multiverse and ricochets randomly between realities. can't keep track of which one he's in at any given moment, and understandably becomes confused.
And maybe there's a universe in which Flynn and Gates and Pappadopolous are innocent, and the Mueller investigation really is a witch hunt.
But not this one.
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